


The Threefold Cord

by ehmazing



Category: RWBY
Genre: Family Member Death, Gen, Reincarnation, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-12
Updated: 2016-01-12
Packaged: 2018-05-13 11:59:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5706910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ehmazing/pseuds/ehmazing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In one day, Amber faces judgment, fear, expulsion, and discovers her place in history.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Threefold Cord

_1000 years ago_

_The First Autumn is a stone smoothed by waves, an ancient city overgrown with forest. She has been worn away to nearly nothing, existing as more presence than person. But while she may no longer have a face or name, she is still there, her soul buried deep. When called upon she answers in memories: the sharp smell of shorn wheat, the joyous cry of a harvest song, the red blush of leaves against the sky. The warmth of one hand in another, a sister’s laugh, a father’s smile._

 

* * *

 

Her ballistics professor stopped the lecture mid-lesson to answer a scroll call, then frowned at her in the way that always told Amber that she was in big, big trouble.

"You've been called to the headmaster's office, Miss Kauri. Take your things with you."

The whispers began immediately. Amber stacked her textbooks quickly, trying not to meet Momoko's eyes. She already dreaded what would happen when she asked her partner for the class notes later, of the inevitable argument that would arise when Shale and Cyrus found out too. Her last detention had cost the team their entry in the winter nationals; Cyrus refused to speak with her for two weeks afterward, folding only under Momoko’s pleas. _How long will it take them to forgive me now?_ she wondered, trying not to fidget under her classmates’ stares as she left the lecture hall.

 

* * *

 

_850 years ago_

_Citrine was named for the lucky stone the wise woman had given her mother on the day of her birth, but misfortune seemed intent on finding her anyway. Her mother died two winters later, her unborn younger brother passing with her. Her father caught his hand with an axe when she was eight, and by the time she’d run down the mountain to fetch the healers he’d bled so much that it took him a week to wake again. Their crops withered in the drought three summers after, and on her sixteenth birthday their lone cow became sick and shriveled so thin that the meat was too sour to eat._

_With such a life full of misery, she wasn’t surprised when the Grimm finally came._

_It was a Beowolf, a young one, still unsteady on its twiggy black legs. Citrine heard it first, snout snuffling at the edge of the door; had she not felt a stab of cold, primal fear in her gut, she could’ve mistaken it for a wandering pig._

_Her father was asleep in his chair by the fire, his axe out of reach in the shed outside. The flickering flames cast his face in dancing shadows, skin lined like worn leather. For a moment she wondered what would happen if she didn’t wake him, if she let the Grimm come. Would it not be better to die, quick and painless, a snapped neck in the jaws of a beast, than to slug through another year of misery, of disappointments?_

_The Grimm was silent for a moment, and suddenly Citrine understood: it was confused, no longer able to sense her fear. She was not afraid, not anymore, not when death was something that seemed easy compared to her long, hard life. She felt a strange sensation, a wave of heat coming over her like bright light. She moved quickly, snatching the iron poker out of the fire. Her father still sat in his chair, fast asleep, and she touched his cheek gently._

_She opened the door._

_When the wise woman drew aside her curtain to see Citrine’s father carrying his daughter, her face sprayed with black blood, her eyes glowing like coals, she prayed in thanks that their luck had finally turned._

 

* * *

 

Professor Abraxas had a building to herself, a small single-story structure nestled in the shadow of Haven’s enormous Grand Cathedral that held the graduation ceremony every spring. Both were at the top of the highest hill on campus, and Amber shielded her eyes from the bright afternoon sun as she climbed the winding stairs to the summit. Though it was three months into the school year, the summer heat was only just beginning to fade in the valley. She was the only one ascending the hill at the moment, most students choosing to take shelter in the shade of the tree-lined paths of lower campus. She was careful where she stepped, some of the marble so ancient that it dipped in the center, worn down by generations of students' shoes.

The Cathedral’s soaring columns cast long, cool shadows over the office porch, a relief after her long walk in the open sun. Amber hesitated at the entry—the door was flung open to let in the breeze, where should she knock?—and jumped when a voice called out, “You may come in.” She ordered herself to take a deep breath and stepped over the threshold.

 

* * *

 

_200 years ago_

_Mariana became a Maiden at fourteen, but she never knew. She’d never met her predecessor, who had died as a stranger collapsed on their porch, claw marks scoring her chest. When her father opened the door the huntress was still breathing her last, eyes fluttering open one last time as she heard Mariana’s laughter from the hearth in the next room._

_They buried her in the garden and Mariana cried inconsolably, though she couldn’t say why. How strange her parents said she was, mourning a stranger as though she’d known her for years? But she had always been a gentle child and a kind one, and soon enough they forgot._

_She married five years later, had three children, and lived sixty easy years without knowing the truth._

 

* * *

 

Haven took a great deal of pride in its age. _The first academy ever established to train new generations of hunters_ , the brochures all boasted. Campus was “historic,” “a piece of Mistrali heritage,” descriptions students recalled sourly when the plumbing broke down every winter and one or two Chiropterrors escaped from their nests in dorm attics and had to be shot down by an RA. In classrooms, holographic projectors were fit over the centuries-old slate chalkboards, a nod to the past while making good on the school’s promise to have its technology up to standard. But if Amber were without her scroll, it would be easy to wander through the olive groves and sculpture gardens and feel trapped in a different time.

Which is why her mouth fell open when she stepped inside Professor Abraxas’ office. All four walls had been fitted with floor-to-ceiling glass monitors, each one active and scrolling. Abraxas stood with her back to the door, hands flicking between screens to open and close files at a dizzying speed. Amber caught a Grimm migration study, student health screenings, meeting notes with the Board of Trustees, a small news clip about the girl who’d just become the nation’s youngest Regional Champion in history. After a moment Amber gave up and closed her eyes, blinking away the bright glare.

Finally, after speeding through a serious-looking email—Amber could only catch the address _@beacon.edu_ —Abraxas turned to face her.

 

* * *

 

_340 years ago_

_It was the snow Xiao Feng hated most. It came down in fat white clumps, soaking even her thickest fur coat. Her ears ached from the cold, whiskers tingling painfully every time she reached up to massage feeling back into the tips._

_The village was only a day’s walk from the pass, she reminded herself yet again. She should reach it by sunset, twilight at the very latest. But the landscape here was all white, an unbroken stretch of rocky mountains. Her own footprints were swallowed by snow as soon as she walked ahead, and her leopard's sense of smell was gone thanks to the piercing wind. She cursed her aching bones, stiff with cold. She could’ve made this trek a dozen times over just ten years ago, when her power was bright and strong with her youth._

_Now it was a struggle just to keep putting one foot in front of the other, the snow piling up around her knees. To distract herself from how her eyes teared against the howling wind, Xiao Feng thought of her young niece, just twelve years old. She could climb cliffs without ropes now, and vexed her mother constantly by scrambling to the roof of the house whenever they had an argument. Xiao Feng had laughed at the two-story shouting match between her sister and niece, but climbed up herself afterward._

_“What’s your trouble, kitten?” Her niece wrapped her arms around her knees, tear-streaked face gazing longingly at the mountains._

_“I want to go places, Auntie,” she said. “I want to be someone important. A huntress, like you. And she won’t let me.”_

_Xiao Feng sighed, stroking her niece’s spotted ears. “Not without reason, kitten. All huntresses can die, even the most important ones. She already has one reckless family member to worry about.” But her niece still cried, and Xiao Feng could only bear so much._

_“Here,” she said, and turned the girl towards her, placing one hand on her forehead and one over her heart. The incantation rolled off her tongue stiffly, garbled from lack of practice, but Xiao Feng felt the energy flow out of her and into her niece like a river winding into the sea. When it was done the girl sat shock-still, eyes wide and glowing._

_“What was—what did you—“_

_“I unlocked your aura,” Xiao Feng answered, feeling her own power slowly returning. “If you can find your semblance and master it by the time I return next summer, I’ll convince your mother to let me take you to the training grounds in Atlas.”_

_Think of her joy then, the warmth of it, Xiao Feng told herself now. Think of how strong she will be come this summer. But her feet faltered in the snow and she fell, soaking herself even further. Her legs shaking too badly to stand, Xiao Feng maneuvered herself into a squat with resignation, telling herself she’d only rest for a few minutes, just enough to get her strength back. How ironic it was, she thought, to be a Maiden weighed down with age._

_Her eyes fluttered closed, the white world fading to black. Xiao Feng’s breaths grew slower, weaker. As she laid slowly down—a rest, just to rest—she thought of her niece on the roof of her sister’s house, ready to take on the world._

 

* * *

 

“Miss Kauri,” Abraxas said. With a wave of her hand all of the screens changed, the walls taking on a dull ivory color that didn’t make her dizzy to look at. “Sit down.”

Amber obeyed, smoothing her skirt to disguise the motion of wiping her sweaty palms. Though she’d been in trouble before, she’d never been sent to Abraxas. Her professors usually handed out detentions or took away her competition privileges. The courtyard fight that had earned her team’s expulsion from the nationals had been reported to the headmaster, she knew, but before now Abraxas had only been a distant figure, a threat of what would happen should she continue to fail Haven’s standards.

She was a very present threat now. Agathe Abraxas cast a shadow like the Cathedral columns just outside her door, towering like a statue who’d stepped down from her base. The glow from the monitors threw the angles of her face into sharp relief, the deep scar across her nose and cheeks like a fissure in stone. She looked at Amber with eyes as dark as her mahogany skin and folded her hands behind her back.

“Amber Kauri. Third-year student, on Team MASC,” Abraxas said. A holoscreen flickered to life on the polished obsidian desk between them and Amber found herself facing the mirror image of her freshman year self. Her palms felt damp again as she realized Abraxas was reading from her official record. “Wields a staff type weapon, mounted with Dust chambers at both ends, collapsible. Not an overzealous weapons engineer then, Miss Kauri?”

Amber blinked, realizing too late that she was expected to answer the question. “I-It was my grandmother’s staff,” she choked out, wincing at how pathetic she sounded. “I was afraid it was too old to withstand remodeling.”

Abraxas hummed, glancing at her blueprints. “Innovation and tradition can never be friends, Miss Kauri,” she said briskly, “but indeed, it is a beautiful piece. And I can see that with it, you’ve scored some of the best combat marks in your year.” Though she sounded pleased at that, Abraxas’ eyes narrowed as the holoscreen scrolled further down. Amber clenched her fists. She knew what was coming next.

“Yet despite your fine academic standing,” Abraxas continued, her tone now as cold and hard as her obsidian desk, “you have incurred fifteen disciplinary infractions since your first year, six of them in this semester alone.”

Amber looked down and forced herself to swallow the dry lump of nervousness in her mouth. 

 

* * *

 

_700 years ago_

_They called Sable a witch, a sorceress. She could call down lightning from the sky, summon fire from the hearth. They spat at her in the street, made the sign against evil when she walked past. She was a summoner, an enchantress. They said the devil-creatures that roamed the forest were her familiars, her pets. There had been no Grimm near the village before she came, why else would they come now?_

_When the lord’s son was dragged away by a Nevermore, the people finally summoned their fear and fury into a mob, intent on burning her house down and Sable with it. But when they stormed into the cottage, she was already gone._

_In a way, they were right. There had been no Grimm near the village before she came, and their numbers dwindled to nothing after she left, since there was no witch to fear anymore._

 

* * *

 

Abraxas scrolled through her record slowly, like a general forming a battle plan, like every fact she stated was a cannon shot perfectly aimed.

“In your first year you shouted at a professor and overturned a weapons rack during a class assignment.”

“Yes.”

"Your second year you were punished for three instances of, I quote, 'unnecessary and gratuitous violence' during matches in the training arena.”

“Yes.”

“Then, just a few months ago, the school year barely begun, you started a fight with a senior student in the east courtyard and broke his hand, for which you and your team were banned from all competitions for the fall semester.”

“Yes.”

The holoscreen collapsed, leaving her with no defense against Abraxas’ glare. “In sum, Miss Kauri, your behavior has grown increasingly aggressive over the mere three years of your attendance. Your actions can no longer be ignored. You have made yourself a danger to the well-being of my students and a stain on Haven’s reputation.”

The sting of salt pricked at the corner of her eyes, each of the words hitting like a slap. Somehow this was worse than Cyrus’ two weeks of furious silence, worse than even Momoko’s tearful begging, because there was no emotion behind it. Abraxas was like her room of machines, relaying only facts. Amber _had_ grown aggressive. She _had_ become a danger to her friends. She _had_ disgraced her school, disgraced the young Amber Kauri who’d smiled in her first year photo, who’d worked for years to be admitted, who’d saved every penny for the journey from Vacuo.

But it was all over now. Amber steeled herself. She set her jaw and determined to look Abraxas in the eye, to be as stony and immovable as her headmaster. She would not cry when she was expelled. She would not cry. Would not cry. Would not—

“When did it begin?”

For a moment Amber did not register the words, but when she realized that Abraxas had not said anything about packing her things, she stumbled to figure out what they was supposed to be talking about.

“When did what begin?” she asked. "Professor,” she added hastily.

Abraxas crossed her arms. “The fights. The violence. You were not a brute when you were admitted to my school, Miss Kauri, so I’d like to know when you became one.”

Amber was quiet. Abraxas did not prod her. The moment stretched on. With the desk holoscreen gone and the walls left white, Amber felt again like she was frozen in time, stuck in a history book where neither she nor the headmaster could do anything until someone turned the page.

Finally, she answered, “The spring of my first year. My sister died.”

Still Abraxas said nothing. Amber drew in a shaky breath and continued.

“I did see a counselor, but they told me that the anger, it was part of grieving. They said it was normal for a teenager to act out like I did.” She wiped her palms on her skirt again, this time not bothering to hide it. “But it didn’t go away. I didn’t—I don’t know how to control it. I feel like there’s something inside me, something terrible. It’s eating me away.”

She jumped when she felt something heavy fall on her shoulder. It was Abraxas’ hand, the headmaster now beside her. Her face was soft now, almost sorrowful.

“Miss Kauri,” she said, her words hushed. “You’re right: this behavior, this feeling is not normal. But fixing it requires you to make certain sacrifices.” She squeezed Amber’s shoulder. “I will explain, but first you have to suspend your doubt, your disbelief. Right now all you have to do is trust me. Can you do that?”

Amber hesitated. Abraxas’ hand felt like iron, heavy and cold. She thought of Momoko fretting about her in the dorms, of Shale trying to convince Cyrus to hold off his anger until they knew what she was in trouble for this time. She thought of being torn away, of never setting foot on Haven’s marble steps again. She thought of her sister on the day she left for the same school, hugging Amber tight and promising she could come visit, come see what she'd learned in the greatest hunting academy in the world. 

Amber said, “I can."

 

* * *

 

_20 years ago_

_Iskra had died in the Faunus wars, killed in a skirmish with soldiers during the relocation period. She left behind one child, a daughter, but the girl showed no signs of either her Faunus or Maiden heritage. Still, Ozpin placed a gentle hand on top of her head before he left._

_“When you are older, come to my school,” he said, smiling as best he could. “You have the make of a great huntress, Cinder.”_

_The little girl didn’t answer, her golden eyes still wary._

_Glynda sighed when they stepped back into the helicopter. “No leads, then. No other family, no friends, not even a neighbor girl of the right age. We’ll have to reinstate the tests in the schools, and Ironwood will have a field day if it’s an Atlas girl this time.”_

_Ozpin was quiet, and after a moment Glynda realized why._

_“Oh. Oh, of course, I’m sorry, I truly am, I always forget that they’re like your—“_

_“My daughters are dead,” he said. "They have been dead for centuries." He folded his hands, examining his gnarled fingers. "None of them, none of these girls, could ever replace them.”_

_The helicopter began to lift off. From the house, Iskra's daughter pressed her face to the window, watching._

_“Still,” he said, sighing, “Every time, it’s like I’ve lost them all over again."_

**Author's Note:**

> I did not stick to the canon color-name system because Ozpin stated it was only put in place after the war, so I figured people further back in history (like the teachers) used normal names and got on fine. Still, I did put a lot of thought into picking the names and put color analogies into them in my own way, so let's explore those!
> 
> \- Amber's last name is the Maori name of pine trees in the genus Agathis, whose sap produce amber.
> 
> \- Momoko is Japanese for "peach child," Shale is a deep brown rock composed of clay fragments, Cyrus is a Greek name meaning "far-sighted." Team MASC is pronounced like "mask."
> 
> \- Since they didn't even name Shade the school until v3 I had to make up headmasters for the other two schools. Agathe Abraxas gets a Mistral/Greek name and her first name is the closest feminine name I could find to Agamemnon, since Pyrrha is Achilles and Achilles didn't want to fight for Agamemnon and Pyrrha chose Beacon instead of Haven, etc etc etc you get it right?
> 
> \- I didn't name the first ever Fall Maiden just because I find the idea of an unbroken, spiraling lineage that has no clear beginning so much more interesting than telling a disappointing origin story……COUGH Avatar Wan COUGH…………
> 
> \- Citrine is named after the stone as stated, and one of the alternate birthstones for the month of November. It is in fact a "lucky" stone and for more info on its ascribed meanings and powers go here: http://meanings.crystalsandjewelry.com/citrine/
> 
> \- Mariana is the feminine form of "Marius" derived from "Mars," the red planet. 
> 
> \- Chiropterrors are bat Grimm I made up, a play on the genus name Chiroptera. The fact that Haven is the oldest hunter academy is also something I made up. The unnamed newly-crowned Regional Champion in the news is a big wink at canon. 
> 
> \- Xiao Feng is the closest I could come to "little maple" in Mandarin, so forgive me if I messed that one up. She, her sister, and niece were all snow leopard Faunus because they never said that the Maiden COULDN'T be a Faunus ergo I do what I want.
> 
> \- Sable is a black-brown color based on the coat of the animal of the same name, which was hunted for its fur. 
> 
> \- Iskra is a Slavic name meaning "spark." Her and Cinder's backstory is based on the fantastic piece by theivorytowercrumbles: http://theivorytowercrumbles.tumblr.com/post/131963024899/the-limits-of-the-page-cinder-fall-gen
> 
> If you are confused about how the lineage went from Iskra to Amber, let me explain:  
> 1\. Iskra becomes the Maiden, dies in the Faunus wars  
> 2\. As she didn't think of Cinder in her last moments, the power passed to a random person: Amber's older sister  
> 3\. Amber's sister dies in an intentionally ambiguous (by me at least) manner, she thinks of Amber and the power passes to her  
> 4\. We all know where it went next :(
> 
> Lastly, the title is taken from Ecclesiastes 4:12: "And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him—a threefold cord is not quickly broken."


End file.
